Photo: Looking Back at the Space Station From Earth

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Photo: Looking Back at the Space Station From Earth

The newly installed cupola on the International Space Station provides the astronauts with a window onto the Earth below them. Now, Ralf Vandebergh has captured an image of that space station component from his backyard telescope.

The new viewing station was launched in February on space shuttle mission STS-130 and attached to the Tranquility module. Vandebergh manually tracks the ISS with his telescope and camera setup, and it takes a fortuitous set of circumstances to capture a great image.

“The best results occur mostly as a surprise when lighting angle, viewing angle, seeing, distance and other factors of the objects are favorable,” Vandebergh explains on his website.

If you want to see what the view is like from inside the cupola, the photo below should give you a good idea. Astronaut Soichi Noguchi has been shooting amazing photos from that perch, which he regularly posts to Twitter.